Agricultural entities and other entities often need to precisely apply materials (such as fertilizers, pesticides, weed killers, water, seeds, plants, or paint) to exact or near exact locations. For example, this could involve the use of large vehicles on farms or other agricultural facilities. In this example, each of these vehicles could include a tank of material to be released and long arms (called “booms”) containing a number of nozzles through which the material is released. As another example, this could involve the use of large vehicles on roads, runways, parking lots, or other areas. In this example, the vehicles may include mechanisms for releasing paint onto the roads, runways, parking lots, or other areas.
Conventional systems often include a radar gun, which is used to determine an actual speed of a vehicle. The actual speed of the vehicle can be used to predict or control an amount of material being released. For example, conventional spraying systems may have a controller that receives a setpoint, such as an amount of material to be sprayed per acre. The controller is coupled to a pump that provides the material to nozzles for spraying. The controller can use the speed of the vehicle (among other parameters) to control the amount of material provided by the pump, which allows the controller to help control the amount of material being sprayed. However, conventional controllers are often programmed based on the assumption that all nozzles or a subset of nozzles are being utilized to spray a maximum amount of material.